who trotted swiftly between the
palm trunks. All might have been well had not Fardet, carried away by
his own success, tried to repeat his trick once more, with the result
that the date fell out of his palm and the deception stood revealed.
In vain he tried to pass on at once to another of his little stock. The
Moolah said something, and an Arab struck Fardet across the shoulders
with the thick shaft of his spear.

"We have had enough child's play," said the angry priest. "Are we men or
babes, that you should try to impose upon us in this manner? Here is the
cross and the Koran--which shall it be?"

Fardet looked helplessly round at his companions.

"I can do no more; you asked for five minutes. You have had them," said
he to Colonel Cochrane.

"And perhaps it is enough," the soldier answered. "Here are the Emirs."

The camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the
two Arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing
with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come. There was a
rapid exchange of words between the Emirs, and then they strode forward
together to the group around the prisoners. Bigots and barbarians, they
were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the
twilight of the palm grove. The fierce old greybeard raised his hand
and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers
yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman. The fire that smouldered in his
arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others. Here were to
be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these
convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic,
red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their
own hands might be bloody when they met it.

"Have the prisoners embraced the true faith?" asked the Emir
Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.

The Moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to
confess to a failure.

"They were about to embrace it, when----"

"Let it rest for a little time, O Moolah." He gave an order, and the
Arabs all sprang for their camels. The Emir Wad Ibrahim filed off at
once with nearly half the party. The others were mounted and ready, with
their rifles unslung.

"What's happened?" asked Belmont.

"Things are looking up," cried the Colonel. "By George, I think we are
going to come through all right. The Gippy Camel Corps are hot on our
trail."

"How do you know?"

"What else could have scared them?"

"O Colonel, do you really think we shall be saved?" sobbed Sadie. The
dull routine of misery through which they had passed had deadened all
their nerves until they seemed incapable of any acute sensation, but now
this sudden return of hope brought agony with it like the recovery of
a frostbitten limb. Even the strong, self-contained Belmont was filled
with doubts and apprehensions. He had been hopeful when there was no
sign of relief, and now the approach of it set him trembling.

"Surely they wouldn't come very weak," he cried. "Be Jove, if the
Commandant let them come weak, he should be court-martialled."

"Sure, we're in God's hands, anyway," said his wife, in her soothing,
Irish voice. "Kneel down with me, John, dear, if it's the last time, and
pray that, earth or heaven, we may not be divided."

"Don't do that! Don't!" cried the Colonel, anxiously, for he saw that
the eye of the Moolah was upon them. But it was too late, for the two
Roman Catholics had dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves.
A spasm of fury passed over the face of the Mussulman priest at this
public testimony to the failure of his missionary efforts. He turned and
said something to the Emir.

[Illustration: Stand up! cried Mansoor p214]

"Stand up!" cried Mansoor. "For your life's sake, stand up! He is asking
for leave to put you to death."